It has been many months since I last posted and much has happened worth mentioning. After jumping through many bureaucratic hoops at the beginning of the summer, I was able to apply for the job of my dreams. Many of you have heard me herald the innovative school in West Philadelphia as one of the most exciting things happening within secondary education. Yes, I am once again talking about the School of the Future, only this time, I am not talking to you as a fan-boy outsider but as a dedicated full time educator whose efforts to get hired at this school did not prove to be in vain.
There is so much I would like to share about this place, in this posting but would fill pages upon pages (the proverbial page obviously) with everything that is going through my head. For this reason, I will keep this posting brief and only concentrate on informing you about the path I have been on these past few months.
As I said before, after certain expeditions through jungles of red tape I was finally able to apply to the School of the Future (or as we call it in house, SOTF). The application was interesting. It took a number hours for me to complete because it essentially asked you to construct a project to be used within the curriculum. As I am currently building the actual curriculum, I now understand the purpose of that exercise; you cannot effectively teach at this school if you can only think in terms of your area of certification. That is, if you can only think of teaching math in the traditional way without being able to connect each topic to a real world problem and also not being able to connect it easily to other subject areas then SOTF is not a good fit.
I was eventually called in for an interview which I had heard was very different from typical interviews. There was three different parts of the interview. It started with a typical Q and A with a group of people (Educators, Learners and Parents) asking me an inordinate number of questions, some of which had 5 parts to them. This took about two hours to complete. I actually have no memory of what I said. I think I was on auto pilot after about an hour. The second part was a group interview where you work with other candidates on a certain task. You were given instructions to complete this task, some of which were missing and others were wrong. I cannot speak about the task I participated in because of a nondisclosure form I signed. What was bizarre about this was that I was the only candidate that day and was asked to complete the task as if I was working within a group. It was weird. The final part which I think was somewhat impromptu, was a face to face interview with the principle (chief learner). We spoke for another hour and a half about the interview, the school and any questions I had. I must have done well because I was offer a position on the spot.
I was hired in July and started work on August 1. After training, professional development, new learner orientation, chaos and curriculum development, it is now time for the second year of the School of the Future to begin. Are we ready? I'm not. All that I can say is, "Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more."
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preparation isn't just about be ready to deal with what you expect. you're good enough on your feet to take on surprises.
i'd say this fall is going to bring about some strange changes in all of us. you particularly. in your preparations and creation of the curriculum you 'plan' to use, you also - by my twisted logic - seem to go against the ironic rubric you're told to use.
thinking outside the box, while fun and useful, can lead to as much disaster as not.
it seems to me like you should teach without daily scribbling on a black board and eye numbing equations on an overhead. but those come from curricula, the set patterns of showing an idea and exploring the ways to expound upon it.
i dare not say there is a classical or traditional way to teach. there are however uninteresting and unmotivated ways. this mostly depends on your students (learners).
while the school requires curricula, both to keep an eye on you and to assure the parents their children are in fact learning, don't glue yourself to it. find out as quickly and fantastically as you can how you're learners take in information and give it back. pay extra close attention to how they give it back.
while i may not be well versed and write essays easily, i can tell you i could build you a replica of the world theater better than you could bs about it. and to a teacher the essay may mean they know more, but honestly a blurb of history about a stage couldn't shake a stick at the intricacies of actually building it.
(now i'm trying to figure out if i accomplished anything by writing any of that)
by the way, i'm 2 stones away from going to sweden (stockholm university at albanova) for my next co-op.
-seth
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